


"I can't"

by hopeomelette



Series: Fanganronpa Fics [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Danganronpa: Deep Despair, Gen, I'm sorry I really am, Pain, no i'm not, ouchies!, read the summary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22198654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeomelette/pseuds/hopeomelette
Summary: A “what if” scenario, set before the start of the Deadly Sins motive. Mitsuharu just learned from a vision from Kaya that Ryuuichi and Yosuke had cut into Asaka’s corpse for some reason, and took something out. He confronted Ryuuichi in canon, and Ryuuichi admitted what happened… but what if he hadn’t have admitted it right away?
Relationships: Mitsuharu Date & Ryuuichi Hanabi
Series: Fanganronpa Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582846
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	"I can't"

“Brother, it’s Haru. I have something incredibly shocking to talk to you about ASAP. Meet me in my room tomorrow.”

The note that flies into Ryuuichi’s room is infuriatingly vague. He had been lying on the ground when the paper was slid under the door, crying his eyes out because of the build up of stress that had happened that day. Of course, there was the main thing - he, along with Mitsuharu, Yosuke, Kosei, and Hanamaru, beat the Dungeons and Dragons game together after a long and painful quest. And it still was painful; his whole body ached due to the nature of the VR program. Not to mention his left leg was still in bad condition from being bitten by a shark. On top of all of this, he ended up being absolutely idiotic and slipping a painkiller to Mitsuharu because he didn’t think he would take any, which just got Mitsuharu mad at him. So… he has plenty of reason to cry.

Mitsuharu’s note was preceded by a more lighthearted note from Yosuke, saying that they could meet up to take out the stitches in his leg. But it also warned Ryuuichi that Mitsuharu was acting odd, and to avoid the topic of what happened at the morgue. The morgue, where he and Yosuke had cut into Asaka Fukuyo’s corpse, only to find that Syn had stuffed a puzzle piece and a chess piece into her heart and then stitched her up. Absolutely terrible. It sickened Ryuuichi to even think about it, so he agreed wholeheartedly with Yosuke - avoid talking about what happened at all costs. He also couldn’t reveal the other thing they found within all of the corpses, the mysterious metal chip, so he vowed himself to absolute silence on the matter. No matter what.

Ryuuichi exited his room slowly the next morning, settling on his crutches as he walked, curious about whatever “shocking” thing Mitsuharu had found out. It very well could have been something that Ryuuichi already knew, by virtue of him being at the forefront of investigating the clues on the new floor with Yosuke, but he still wished to find out. He glances between both Mitsuharu and Yosuke’s doors, and his gaze lingers on Yosuke’s door for a moment. “...Wish me luck…” he mutters to himself, and then he crutches over to Mitsuharu’s door and knocks slowly.

Mitsuharu’s door slowly opens, and on the other side is Mitsuharu himself. Ryuuichi immediately noticed that his eyes were red, as if he had been crying, and yet… he had a wide smile on his face. “Ah… Hello Brother, I see you got my note.”

Ryuuichi doesn’t bother hiding his confusion. Why on Earth is Mitsuharu smiling? He hadn’t seen him smile like that since… well, since Asaka died. Despite his obvious confusion, though, he just nods to Mitsuharu. “I did…” A bit of concern enters his voice. “You found something shocking? What is it?”

Mitsuharu simply steps aside, opening the door fully, clearly offering for Ryuuichi to enter his room. “Come inside, have a seat. You definitely won’t want to be standing when you hear this one.”

His concern intensifies now, his confusion being overridden by worry. What could it have possibly been? Ryuuichi intended to find out, either way, so he stepped past Mitsuharu and into his room. He stays standing for the moment, though, simply coming to a stop near the center of the room and glancing around worriedly for anything new or out of place. There didn’t seem to be anything new… so he just turns around, and looks back towards Mitsuharu just as he closes the door to his room.

Mitsuharu leans back on the door now that it’s closed, and moves his katana Masamune out in front of him, the tip just barely skimming the floor. His left hand reaches behind him, resting on the doorknob for a moment… and then he locks the door with a click.

Ryuuichi tilts his head to the side slowly, an uneasy feeling now rising back up in the pit of his stomach.

Mitsuharu’s smile is unwavering… actually, it seems to widen slightly, and he begins stepping forward towards Ryuuichi. “I’m not in the mood for small talk, so I’ll get right to it. Kaya channeled Asa for me, and after it was over... Kaya threw up! It was pretty odd... I asked her what the problem was, and she mentioned something about cutting, and that she needed to take me somewhere... Do you know where she took me, Ryuuichi?”

Ryuuichi takes a second to process all of that. As he registers the connection between Asaka and cutting, and then going somewhere, he feels himself starting to panic pretty badly. However, he repressed it as usual, covering up his immediate panic with simple confusion. There was no way that Mitsuharu could have known what they did. “Wh… What…?”

Mitsuharu continues taking steps towards Ryuuichi. “...She took me to the morgue. I explained to her that yes, there were, in fact, bodies there. She almost threw up again, and she ran out. I went after her and I asked her again, what’s up. So she told me that she remembered being in a very small room... cold, dark… her body felt wrong. After a bit, she saw light, and two men above her, talking. They cut into her... looked around in her chest, and took something from inside. How odd that this happened after channeling Asaka, hm?” At this point, Ryuuichi started subconsciously moving backwards with his crutches, away from Mitsuharu’s advances. This doesn’t deter him in the slightest. “She saw their faces. Do you know who she told me she saw?”

Ryuuichi started looking more nervous than confused, still continuing to move backwards, even though he was just backing further into the room. “That... what- she... are you telling me that she saw _me?_ Doing that to... to Asaka...?!”

Mitsuharu’s smile widens even further, though now there’s a threatening glint in his eyes. “Yes! You got it! Your brain works fine! She saw you _and_ Yosuke!”

More steps backwards. “W-Wait… that… that’s insane…”

More steps forwards. “Well, it happened. She saw you, cutting into her body. But it wasn’t her body, it was Asaka’s, right?” 

Ryuuichi takes another step backwards... or, he would, but his back hits a wall and he presses himself against it. His outward confusion is now mixed with a spark of fear in his eyes. 

“Well... I’m here to find out why you _defiled_ her body, and to find out what you took from inside of it. You can tell me that.”

His mind was racing. Mitsuharu’s accusations were way too accurate to deflect by saying that Kaya was mistaken. Plus, he could easily have verified the stitching in Asaka’s chest himself, there’s no getting out of that one. But… telling Mitsuharu the truth here was dangerous. Who knew how mad he would be upon hearing about what they had done to her? And what if he didn’t believe the truth, thinking that they had just looked into the bodies without the suspicion towards the stitches being there previously? And, of course, Yosuke told him to not tell Mitsuharu about the morgue. So… 

“I…” Ryuuichi chokes out after a moment, and then averts his eyes. “I… can’t.”

“...You _what?”_

“I can’t… I can’t say…” 

Mitsuharu’s face twists into one… of absolute rage. _I can’t._ The words that Ryuuichi had spoken to him on multiple occasions before, when talking about trying to open up to Mitsuharu about… well, anything. In those times, before, he had felt this same deep frustration with Ryuuichi. He can’t say, or he won’t say? Mitsuharu had always assumed that it was that he wouldn’t say. That he was just keeping secrets for the sake of keeping secrets, as well as purposefully being infuriating. But this… this was about Asaka. He was keeping a secret about _defiling Asaka._

Ryuuichi flinches, clearly noticing Mitsuharu’s rage, and opens his mouth to try and deflect more…… and is swiftly interrupted by Mitsuharu punching him in the gut. Hard.

His eyes go wide with stunned shock for a split moment. His grip loosens on his crutches. After the initial shock passed, Ryuuichi let out a strangled squeak of pain and doubled over, putting his hands on his stomach… and then he falls to his knees on the ground, crumpling weakly into kneeling while his crutches clatter to the ground. This sends a shooting pain up his left leg, but he hardly even notices it, head down now.

_“Wrong answer!”_ Mitsuharu snaps at him, and crouches down after he fell. He keeps Masamune in hand, and uses his free hand to forcefully grab Ryuuichi by the collar, forcing him to look back up at him. “Tell. Me.”

When Ryuuichi lifted his head to look back at Mitsuharu, he was met with a completely unfamiliar sight... Ryuuichi was crying. He had already begun to cry just from the one punch to the gut, and he trembled with fear. “N… N… Please…” 

In normal circumstances, Ryuuichi’s terror would be absolutely jarring. He had never seen him like this specifically before, and Mitsuharu was well aware that Ryuuichi was actually - in normal circumstances - near incapable of crying in front of other people. However, he was too caught up in the heat of the interrogation to register any of this. He shoved Ryuuichi, making him hit the back of his head and his back against the wall with a loud thunk. “Tell me what you did!”

Ryuuichi’s shaking increases, and more tears start falling from his eyes in earnest. “I-I’m… I’m… s-sorry…!” he manages to choke out after a moment, looking like he’s going to continue to speak, but he cuts himself off with a broken sob.

Mitsuharu grits his teeth, and lets go of Ryuuichi’s collar, only to redirect his fist into Ryuuichi’s side, somehow an even harder punch than the first. “Spit it out or else.” Ryuuichi cries out in pain at the hit, shrinking into himself even more and sobbing harder. He hesitates, not saying anything. Mitsuharu clearly doesn’t like the lack of response, as he reels back and then whips his fist in a backhand at Ryuuichi’s cheek.

Ryuuichi’s head snaps to the side, and he squeaks in pain. That seems to be his breaking point, as he manages to say through the sobs, “Pu… Puzzle… piece…!”

This makes Mitsuharu pause, and he moves his hand back to Ryuuichi’s collar to hold him up a bit. “Explain.”

“Th… There… was a… p-puzzle… piece…” He sobs. “S… Syn… she… t-tampered with her… and put a puzzle piece… and chess… piece… in her…!”

Mitsuharu’s eyes widen for a moment, before he narrows his eyes and grits his teeth again. “Where is it?”

“Pock… et…”

Mitsuharu places Masamune down on the ground, now that he doesn’t need it to intimidate Ryuuichi, and shoved his hand into his pocket. Sure enough, he feels a puzzle piece, and pulls it out. It’s labeled with a 1. “Good, no more lies…” he grumbles, and shoves it back into Ryuuichi’s pocket.

Ryuuichi flinches back, pressing himself against the wall even more as broken sobs continue to wrack his body. Mitsuharu takes a moment to look over Ryuuichi, now that he had gotten something of a response… generally, his breathing was unusually fast and shallow, his uncharacteristic terror seemingly overcoming him as he looked to be on the verge of a panic attack, if he wasn’t having one already. Tears were still streaming down his face, his eyes screwed shut. The cheek that Mitsuharu had hit was now red. He was still trembling and had his hands on his stomach, weakly protecting where the two blows had hit him…… and most concerning of all, Mitsuharu only notices now, is that a small amount of red had begun to blossom on Ryuuichi’s bandages on his leg. His wound likely didn’t reopen, seeing as how it had been quite a while since the shark bite, but the sutures had probably dislodged and were bleeding a bit, which would have hurt a lot, too.

Mitsuharu softens slightly, and backs off and away from him. “Ryuuichi, your-“

Ryuuichi ends up cutting him off as he lets out a scared noise, and tries to get away from the bounty hunter. He weakly ignores where he dropped his crutches, and just tries scrambling away towards the door.

“Hey, wait! Your leg!” Mitsuharu reaches out to him and grabs his shoulder.

Ryuuichi’s response… is to yell, terrified, and go limp on the ground. “N-No please no!”

Mitsuharu jerks his hand back, his eyes widening in realization. “I…”

“N-Not… again… please don’t… please don’t hurt me again…” he sobs, trembling even harder again. It looked like he was almost working himself up into hysterics, unable to calm down entirely. 

Mitsuharu seems absolutely lost, moving back away from him even more. Before Mitsuharu can decide what he should do, Ryuuichi takes this opportunity to get up off of the ground and dart over to the door. Mitsuharu gets up as well, starting to follow, but he stops when Ryuuichi gets the door unlocked. He doesn’t even hesitate to open the door, and staggers out into the hall.

**Author's Note:**

> uwu
> 
> More chapters will be added eventually :D


End file.
